Laptops alone can’t bridge the digital divide

Nearly a million kids have got their first covid shot in the US 

Sponsored by Morgan Stanley The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology The trouble with laptops for all 11.11.21 Good morning! Today: why pandemic pledges to hand out laptops to kids failed to make a real difference to the education divide. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Laptops alone can’t bridge the digital divide   The pandemic helped to breathe new life into an old idea: improving educational outcomes by handing laptops out to children. In May 2020, two months after covid-19 shut down schools, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he was giving $10 million to California’s Oakland Unified School District to purchase 25,000 Chromebooks. The schools certainly needed the help. Despite the city’s proximity to Silicon Valley’s centers of power and wealth, 71.2% of its children qualified for free or reduced-price school lunch the year the pandemic hit. Press coverage was breathlessly positive. The initiative bore some similarities to one more than 15 years ago that made similar promises for the world’s poorest children. In November 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder of the MIT Media Lab, unveiled a bright-green mock-up laptop outlined in black rubber. It would cost just $100, and he claimed that hundreds of millions of the devices would be in the hands of children around the world by the end of 2007. That didn’t come to pass, obviously. Like many “one laptop per child” schemes, it ended up blighted by technical problems, unforeseen ongoing costs, unreliable or non-existent internet connections, and other issues that continue to perpetuate technological disparities around the world. Read the full story. By Morgan Ames, author of The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child. This story is from our latest magazine issue, all about computing. Subscribe to read it! And if the topic interests you, read this excellent report by Tanya Basu about the children being left behind by America’s online schooling. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Do you struggle to find words to express how you feel? You need the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.   + Skeptical that an amethyst ring can prevent a hangover but hey, there's no harm in trying?!   + Trick your brain into seeing a black-and-white photograph in color.   + These kimono designs are gorgeous.   + Billie Eilish sang Happier Than Ever with the Count on Sesame Street.   + Cats pretty much always know where you are in the house (and that's why it's so difficult to surprise them.)   + It's always good to be clear and concise, not least because it makes you seem more confident. Which technologies were just emerging the year you were born?  Interested to see how our yearly predictions of the 10 breakthrough technologies have turned out? Purchase a Premium subscription to MIT Technology Review for access to our entire magazine archive, going all the way back to our first issue in 1899. Subscribe now. Sponsor Message Financing Urban Forest Restoration See how Trees As Infrastructure, an open source platform by UK-based Dark Matter Labs, is establishing nature as a critical part of urban infrastructure, alongside bridges, roads and rail, enabling investment, profitability and sustainability. TreesAI is one of the five inaugural recipients of the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Collaborative. Learn more. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Nearly a million kids have got their first covid shot in the US 💉 Bet that took a lot of lollipops. (NPR)   + The number of eligible unvaccinated people in the US has dropped 40 percent since July. (Ars Technica)   + How covid will end. (The Economist $)   + Germany just recorded 50,000 new cases in a single day. (Gizmodo)   + What we still need to know about covid pills. (Nature)  2 India wants $1 trillion before it commits to more ambitious climate pledges That's a spanner in the works for a COP26 deal. (Bloomberg $)   + But China and the US have vowed to work together to slow global warming. (Bloomberg $)   + Rich nations are failing Bangladesh. (CNET)   + The case for climate reparations. (NY Mag)   + The COP talks have become a huge sponsorship opportunity for big corporations. (Earther)  3 Social media won't help us to make sense of the Astroworld tragedy We want to blame a single party. That will prove impossible. (Vox)   + There won't be easy answers for this. (Vulture) ​​ 4 It's becoming quicker and easier to diagnose dementia That's good, yet also a huge problem. (The Economist $)   + A psilocybin trial found the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression. (STAT)  5 Facebook lets stolen content flourish It's fearful of entering a legal minefield. (WSJ $)   + The new "Meta" logo is just… boring. (NYT $)  6 Inside the hunt for a computer that can read your mind 🧠🔍 It's an incredibly tricky process that's taking decades to produce results. (Wired $)   7 We might finally find some cures for chronic pain  Research is honing in on the role played by a set of nervous system cells called glia. (NYT $)   8 QAnon has made it to New Zealand And its adherents tried to storm the parliament building there. Horribly familiar. (Vice)   9 The site that kickstarted the NFT revolution The total value of Crypt­oPunk sales now has surpassed $1.5 billion. (Wired $)   10 An environmentally-friendly way to launch rockets? Sling em into space This could be a lot cheaper too, if it works (big if.) (Gizmodo) Quote of the day “It went to my head.” —WeWork's cofounder Adam Neumann tells the New York Times that the company's peak valuation of over $47 billion in 2019 may have corroded his ability to think clearly. Top image credit: ANDREA DAQUINO Please send amethyst rings to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Build your strategic defense again cybercriminals Join us virtually | November 16-17, 2021 Register now Want to change how you receive these emails? You can *update your preferences or *unsubscribe from this list.  Subscription Information This message was sent to  Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog *the blog owner has deleted the hyperlink intentionally    Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142